


The Emptiness of Burning Cities

by treefrogie84



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Typical Major Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Exhaustion, M/M, Mercenary Work, Political Prisoners, Pre-Canon, Unprocessed Trauma, bad things happening to kids, prison labor, stressed team, the cost of violence paid by the soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: They’ve been running missions non-stop for over two months, and Andy just keeps pushing for more: more jobs, faster. They’re all exhausted and Joe just wants a break. One more job and then he’s putting his foot down, grabbing Nicky, and running for the hills.He just wasn’t expecting it to go so very bad.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 78





	The Emptiness of Burning Cities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hermit9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/gifts).
  * Inspired by [From Here, I Can Pretend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161585) by [Hermit9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9). 



> This is a prequel to Hermit's [From Here, I Can Pretend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161585). Mostly, she was working on that and I went, "Hey, can I break them before you put them back together?"
> 
> Hermit also is the one that come up with the useful tags up there, so ya know, thank her. 
> 
> Other than Hermit reading over it for tagging help, unbeta'd, we die like immortals.

“Let’s move,” Andy barks, shouldering her backpack in the spring humidity. “The others will meet us at the house.”

“And then we’ll take a break?” Joe asks plaintively, dangerously close to whining. It’s pointless to even ask, but he can’t help it. Andy has been running them ragged for months, they’re coming off their fourth mission in two months. And she’s showing no sign of slowing down.

This last job had them split, Booker and Nicky wearing their very best American accents while Joe and Andy cooled their heels outside the compound, destroying enough shit that the assholes never had a chance to look too carefully at their newest recruits. It would have been a fun job— although Joe really thought he was done beating the bigotry out of Nazis decades ago— except Andy’s timetable for the job and her growing lack of concern for the victims.

That’s new. And worrisome. But she’s gone on tears like this before when something pisses her off. They never work out the trigger, and it’ll burn itself out eventually. In the meantime, the only option is to hold on and wait for a chance to relax. Hold their breath that it doesn’t take too long, that they can keep up.

“We’ll see,” Andy snaps, leading the way through Singapore’s back alleys.

That’s as good as a flat _no_. Joe sighs silently, picks up his own gear and slips behind Andy.

Nicky and Booker are already at the house, checking the perimeter and loading the weapon caches. Joe steals Nicky away as soon as he can, curling around his husband’s back in the small entryway.

Nicky hums, reaching up to clutch briefly at Joe’s arm before picking his bag up. “Let’s finish, caro mio. Then we can relax a bit.”

Joe grumps before separating himself, dragging their bags into the smaller of the two bedrooms, pushing Booker and Andy’s bags into the other. It takes a few minutes to find the sheets— sealed in aging plastic bags— and spread them on the beds. This won’t be a long stay and the beds are uncomfortable, but it’s better than a tent in the American desert hunted by jackasses on four-wheelers.

Nicky and Joe leave in search of food when the house is set up, both proper grocery shopping and grabbing some takeaway. All four of them are too tired to cook tonight (Joe’s honestly too tired to go shopping, but this has always been their chore). The rest of their short stay, it will depend on who’s feeling like it.

Assuming Andy’s current drive doesn’t have them gone again in just a couple of days. (They’ll be gone in four days, max, with how Andy’s pushing. Joe is trying to be okay with that.)

Joe is too tired to pretend when they get back to find that Booker has already found some local alcohol that reeks of durian— sweat socks and rotting. He ignores the stench for the time being, carefully putting vegetables and rice into their places on the shelves, lining the few canned goods up for Nicky to have within easy reach while cooking. And then, the basics of living like people completed, he carefully and calmly picks up the bottle from the table— ignoring Booker’s complaints— and deliberately carries it outside.

And empties it into one of the flower pots.

The necessities of their lives means he can, and frequently does, ignore or avoid irritants that come with living with other people. This isn’t one of them. He refuses to have the stink of durian in their kitchen, or risk Andy and Booker dying of liver failure while Nicky is trying to cook dinner.

They can drink something that doesn’t smell like rancid sweat or they can not drink at all. (He thinks they’re drinking too much anyway. Like so much of their lives, it goes in cycles. He can’t deal with it right now, he’s too tired, frazzled from too many jobs in too little time.)

Booker bends back over his tablet, poking at whatever it is he does on there before making a satisfied noise. “Andy, up for a meet this evening?”

“No!” Joe snaps. “We agreed we needed a few days after this last one. We’re not—“

“Shut up, Joe.” Andy leans against the table, looking down at Booker. “What’s the job?”

“Eh, you know how it is. No details until we agree to meet. Looks like that sweatshop job in Myanmar a few years back though.”

Modern day slavery. Joe sighs silently and walks out of the room. A day, maybe two, and they’re out of here. In the meantime, he has weapon maintenance to deal with while Nicky cooks dinner. Gritting his teeth, he spreads an old sheet across a low table in the living room and fetches the whetstone.

He’s not quite sure when it became solely his and Nicky’s jobs to keep them acting like people, but it has. Sharpen the knives, clean the guns, cook something that doesn’t solely come out of a can.

Joe dreams, sometimes, of weeks and months spent in their house in Malta, the gardens south of Montreal, the sea cliffs north of Lima. Rest and green things, the deep breaths that make their lives worth it.

The front door screeches as it opens and shuts behind Andy and Booker, leaving the place that much emptier. Nicky comes out of the kitchen, two glasses of juice in hand, and settles across from him.

“What are you thinking of, my love?”

“Montreal in the summer,” Joe admits. “The scent of roses as they sprawl across the paths and trellises.”

Nicky nods. “It’s been a while since we’ve been there, seen Francis and the nuns.”

It has. Five or six years at least, and that was barely more than a weekend. “It would be nice—“

Nicky huffs and rolls his eyes, his displeasure at the current situation obvious. In theory, any of them can refuse to do a job, can walk away, but it never happens. Loyalty and love and everything else all twisted together so that when there’s a job in front of them, it gets done. “When this current streak is done, perhaps.”

Perhaps.

Joe blows him a kiss across the table before picking up yet another throwing knife and getting to work.

* * *

Dinner is quiet, uneasy, with Joe and Nicky focused on the food while Andy and Booker get drunker and drunker, splashing out bottles of whiskey and vodka. At least they’re tired enough to pass out relatively early.

Joe is just… tired. Heartworn. Too much fighting, not enough living.

They curl around each other on the twin bed, silent, although neither of them are sleeping. Just holding each other close and pretending that everything is alright.

Nicky drifts off at some point, breathing evening out slow and deep while his heart remains steady. It’s been Joe’s lullaby for a thousand years, but it doesn’t work tonight. He stays awake, watching the darkness in front of them, trusting the wall behind them to protect his back.

He’s the first one moving in the morning, fixing an easy breakfast of rice and fruit, strong tea brewing while he watches the sun start to creep across the tile floor. It doesn’t help, his eyes still gritty and red-rimmed, but it’s something.

“Did you sleep at all,” Nicky asks in their private language as he comes into the kitchen, rubbing Joe’s shoulders where he’s slumped at the kitchen.

Joe shakes his head slightly, taking another drink of tea, wishing it was coffee. But they had debated yesterday while shopping and determined that tea kept longer and they should use some of the store in the safe house before bringing home coffee. “I might have dozed,” he lies. “But not for long.” He didn’t, couldn’t trust that as soon as he fell asleep he wouldn’t wake right back up from a nightmare.

It’s only one night. Maybe two, if he can’t sleep tonight either. Nothing he’s not done before.

“Meeting is in two hours,” Booker announces when he emerges from the bathroom, his hair still damp and curling slightly at the ends. “At the marina gardens.”

Draining his tea, Joe nods and pushes away from the table. “I’ll be ready in ten. Eat something.”

They separate once they reach the gardens, Andy and Booker wandering around the gardens separately while Joe and Nicky stick together, finding the best vantage points to watch over the meeting.

It would be a nice day, if they didn’t have business at hand. Sticky hot, of course, but there’s enough of a breeze to keep the worst of it at bay, and the sun shines brilliantly, showing off all the honey-blonde that hides in Nicky’s hair. Joe watches him, and the tourists around them, pretending like always that they belong.

The only place he belongs is Nicky’s arms. Sometimes a quiet bar with the football game with Booker next to him, on horseback next to Andy, but always _always_ in Nicky’s arms.

They settle onto a bench near a coffee cart, watching the table where Andy is meeting with whoever is hiring them this time. Her face is unhappy as the man passes her a folder of information— no tablets, just paper— and she pages through it. A hard job then, with innocents to keep out of the line of fire.

Booker ambles past, keeping an eye on the man’s bodyguard. He’s more obvious than they are, dressed in a dark suit and visibly watching. Andy watches the client, Booker watches his bodyguard, Joe and Nicky act as backup for both. Daylight, in a crowded part of the city? This is about all the precautions they can take. There aren’t any convenient apartments overlooking the park after all, for them to set up a sniper’s nest.

Andy says something sharp to their client, coming to her feet and tucking the folder away. They’re taking the job then, like there was a chance they weren’t. Joe sighs, stretching his legs out some while barely glancing up from his book. “A vacation—“

“I know, beloved. Perhaps after this.”

After this will be another job. And another. Until Andy has reached some limit that she doesn’t share with the rest of them. She can keep going forever, ignore the dragging hurts and exhaustion that bog down the rest of them.

(She hurts too, he knows, her heart torn in two and even after all this time, still oozing blood. Joe wants to find her wife, his sister, with the same aching urgency as a dying man wants water, but they exhausted every lead centuries ago. Andy will bleed until her final death, he thinks.)

Joe sighs, a silent puff of air that can’t be heard over the harbor a dozen meters away. He’s better than this, better than resentfully watching his family prepare for another mission. Because this is what they do, and they do it for the right reasons and he has been content with that for nine-hundred years, and he’ll have to continue being content with it for who knows how many more.

Andy and Booker leave, weaving between the tourists as their client and his bodyguard go in the opposite direction. Joe and Nicky stay put for a while, watching to make sure no one is following the others before tucking their unread novels and phones back into their pockets and meandering towards the exit. Their work here is done, now it’s just a matter of figuring out what is happening next.

* * *

“They’re an international organization trying to get numbers on prison labor,” Booker says at the table, pushing the folder to the center. Joe grabs it, skimming through it, stopping at the blueprints. “They’re worried that the government has taken a page of the US’s playbook, selling prison labor to the highest bidder.”

“That’s what they _were_ worried about,” Andy points out. “But now one of their board members— and her entire family— have been arrested as dissentients, arrested, and moved. They lost contact with her three weeks ago.”

“Any ideas on where she was taken?” Nicky asks, tapping the blueprint. “They have some information, clearly.”

“For better or worse, the government has been keeping family groups together.” Booker sighs. “Her husband has a degree in engineering, designing automated processes for Foxconn. She was a doctor at a local hospital. Their son, who also was arrested, is fifteen.”

“They could be anywhere,” Joe says. “A camp, a factory…”

“A factory.” Andy drains the tea in front of her angrily. “Near as they can tell, husband and the kid are working on the factory floor, assembling cheap toys for kids. Our missing board member is in the infirmary. ”

“Okay. So we go in, we organize a prison break, and we get out. Taking our political prisoners with us.”

“More or less,” Booker agrees with a quick glance at Andy. “I figure three days for prep and we go on the fourth night.”

“I’m giving you one,” Andy announces. “We go tomorrow night.”

Something about this feels wrong, like a set up, but Joe can’t put his finger on it. And even if he could, he needs evidence. Not a gut feeling when no one else is feeling it.

Pushing away from the table, he nods. “Alright. We’ll need at least a couple hours to clear out of here. Someone go convince one of the aunties to take the produce.”

They’re gone in less than an hour, the safehouse packed up and left waiting just like it was less than thirty-six hours ago.

* * *

Everything goes wrong from the start.

The border between Singapore and Malaysia isn’t the least flexible border in the world, and they generally avoid the problem by just commissioning a boat, or stealing one, but there’s a festival of some kind. Which leaves them with no way of leaving the island without being noticed.

Grumbling, Joe stares at the bridges crossing to the mainland and stomps off to find a cheap car that can make the trip.

He pays out the nose for it, no amount of haggling can get it below outrageous (although he did at least get it down from the insulting price they’d started at). So they pile into a tiny hatchback held together with duct tape and clothespins, and slowly make their way across, listening to the engine grind and whine.

The car dies completely about seventy-five kilometers into their trip.

“This job is cursed,” Joe mumbles to Booker as they bend over the engine, trying to beat it into running again. “We’ve never had this sort of trouble and had it work out.”

“What’s the worst that's going to happen?” Booker asks. “We die and then disappear?

We had worse things happen last year, let alone in our lives.” He looks almost relieved to know that things are just going to keep going downhill.

It doesn’t really improve Joe’s mood, hot and sweating. And it’s not even true. Last year the worst they had encountered was a particularly nasty case of food poisoning when Nicky decided gas station sushi was a safe lunch choice.

“That’s not something to surpass,” Joe snaps. “Just because we’ve had worse doesn’t mean this doesn’t suck or that it’s not cursed.”

“Joe,” Nicky says quietly. “Enough. We’re all hot. Just… get the car running again?”

Andy mutters something under her breath about fucking horses, stomping over and ripping half the wires out of the engine. She hastily wires things back together before pointing imperiously at the driver’s seat. “Start it.”

It whines its way to life as soon as Nicky twists the key. Snorting, Andy dumps their last water bottle into the radiator and points back to the car. “Let’s move. I want to get to the airfield by dark.”

It would be faster to just go directly to their target, but Andy always has her reasons. She’s not sharing them right now, but Joe’s sure they exist. Maybe they’re picking up more weapons. Or an escape route. One of those sure would be nice.

Joe forces himself to take a deep breath before squeezing himself into the backseat of the car again. He closes his eyes, leaning his head against the back of the seat, and tries to calm down. Being on edge isn’t going to help a damn thing at this stage, it’ll probably hurt their chances actually.

But he can’t force himself to relax. Every jolt in the roadway, muttered joke between Andy and Booker, every time Nicky shifts because his legs are cramping… it all just ramps up his nerves, knotting his shoulders until they nearly touch his ears. His jaw aches with how tight it feels, his back twisting out of shape.

Its going to be hell trying to fight like this, but Joe doesn’t really have another option— it’s not like he can have Andy pull over for a quick pre-battle fuck. Even if he could, he doubts it’ll work, not with how tense everything is.

Nicky reaches over between one breath and the next, digging his thumb into the muscle on the side of his neck. It _hurts_ , the muscle is so frozen.

“Beloved,” Nicky says quietly, probably not loud enough to be heard over the road noise. “Is everything alright? How can I help?”

Joe twitches his head no. “It’s nothing, just stress. I’ll be better on the other side of this job.”

Nicky doesn’t look convinced, but there’s nothing else for Joe to do. They have to go forward with the job at this point, and his paranoia is scarcely a reason to cut it short. They lapse back into silence, although Nicky keeps massaging Joe’s neck, trying to impart some degree of calm.

They reach the airfield just after dusk. Still plenty of light to see, but dark enough to obscure features if they’re caught on film.

“Holy shit.” Andy slams the car into park, climbing out and looking around. They all pile out after her, looking at the concrete patch that normally just holds a latrine and fuel tanks.

There’s nothing left but a broken crater. Even the smoothed runway has been torn up— someone took a fucking plow to it. There won’t be any smugglers passing through here for a long time. The planes will be landing and taking off somewhere near here within days, but that doesn’t solve their immediate problem.

“Fuck,” Booker coughs, a few meters away. “Someone wanted to be through.”

“Someone?” Nicky asks sharply.

Booker shrugs, gesturing at the crater. “Two, three days past death? Hard to tell without getting a lot more up close and personal. Gangs or government, it could be either, and both are bad news.”

Stepping closer, Joe’s face goes slack. It’s a lot deeper than he thought, nearly two meters— there must have been an underground tank that also exploded— which would be terrible enough. But there are also at least six men, probably more, piled inside. Most of them have clear gunshot wounds to the head, but at least two that he can see also have bone deep lacerations. Caught in the explosion maybe, and then shot before being thrown to fill in the hole.

Joe has seen more than enough death over his life, and Booker is right: these men are well beyond their help. The farming village nearby— there’s always at least one— will investigate when their sons don’t come home and mourn the loss, burying their dead and with it their future. And the cycle will repeat itself a few dozen kilometers away. It’s endless.

He didn’t even know these men, but Joe stands over their grave and weeps out his frustration and exhaustion until Nicky and Booker pull him away and back into the car.

Too much death. He’s just so _tired_.

* * *

Obviously, they don’t end up with the extra weapons and supplies that Andy had planned to have for their assault. Joe thinks about the amount of guns and ammo in the trunk (barely hidden under a couple of blankets and their bags of clothes) and the size of the facility they’re about to go into and doesn’t like the numbers he’s coming up with.

They’re going to die. A lot.

They’re lucky, all of them, in the long run. Death hasn’t stuck yet, anyway. But every time it’s another roll of the dice, another chance that this death will be the one that sticks. The thought terrifies him, that the next time Nicky catches a bullet when he runs between soldiers and a child, or Booker runs into a burning library, or Andy walks into a riot with nothing but her fists and a steel spine, will be the last. He’ll blink and they’ll be gone, forever. And they won’t know until it’s too late.

Contorting himself, he presses his face against Nicky’s shoulder, shutting out the world for the space of a few kilometers before Andy parks the car for the last time.

They’re here.

* * *

Approaching from the east, it’s well after dark by the time they reach the fence that surrounds the outermost boundaries of the camp. Joe spots a second row of fencing glinting in the distant lights a few meters away, just far enough for a jeep to be able to patrol between the two.

Andy hums, before gesturing for Joe and Nicky to follow the fence north. “Find the patrol, get a map of the gates.”

Joe nods sharply, settling his ball cap firmly onto his head and hiking the strap of his shotgun further up his shoulder. “Back in thirty.”

Nicky settles his scabbard on his hip, testing the draw before nodding. “Pronto.”

Joe watches the terrain as they half-jog along the fence. Near flat with not much in the way of vegetation. Even if someone escaped over the duplicate fencing, they’d have a hell of a time hiding with guards or whatever on their tail. It’s still green, but nothing to hide behind.

Means they’re gonna have a hell of time getting out too, but they can make other options if they need to.

Nicky holds up his hand after about ten minutes and then they’re both scrambling for the low rise, trying to get out of sight.

The Jeep rumbles into view a couple minutes later, splashing their headlights everywhere. This would be easier if the fence wasn’t in the way, but too late now. A couple of heartbeats later, Nicky’s rifle barks and the Jeep jerks to a stop.

Joe is up and moving before the sound has faded. Throwing himself at the fence, he half-jumps, half-climbs it, ignoring the tug of the barbed wire on his skin. He pulls his pistol on his way down, squeezing the trigger three times.

Another pistol fires back, tearing into his hip and making him stumble. He rolls as he goes down, hoping he doesn’t end up taking a grenade on his way.

He doesn’t, but the survivor does empty his entire clip into Joe’s back.

He wakes up a few minutes later, coughing blood into the dirt tire track beneath him.

“Ready?” Nicky asks, wiping his sword on the back of one of the guards. It looks like he managed to get over the fence before Joe even realized he was dead. “Someone will have heard those shots.”

Joe huffs and pushes himself to his feet. “Yeah. I’m good.”

They pass a small gate on the inner fence about half way back to Andy and Booker, but nothing on the outer fence. Nicky ransacks the papers in the glove compartment and dash while Joe drives, but he doesn’t find anything that looks like a map. They’re just going to have to take the chance.

“Could you have been any louder?” Andy snaps as she swings into the back of the Jeep. “Heard all that clear as day.”

There wasn’t another option, so Joe ignores her, waiting for Booker to settle before speeding back to the gate. “No maps,” Nicky announces. “No radio either.”

“They have timed patrols? Shit.”

Good news: the bad guys don’t know that their patrol is dead. Bad news: that situation will only last for approximately five minutes after their check-in time. Maybe a little longer if their luck is with them, but none of them like relying on luck during jobs.

Damn whatever crawled up Andy’s ass anyway.

“No time to change the plan now,” Booker snarks from the back, tapping the roll bar above him. “So let's move.”

Joe barrels through the gate, barely slowing down as the fencing screams and tears across the hood. No time for subtlety apparently, this is just balls to the wall rushing ahead without plan or thought.

He hates these plans.

They ditch the Jeep against a fence behind one of the dormitories. If they’re lucky, it won’t be noticed until they’re done. If they’re unlucky, well, they’ve survived worse. Joe just hopes they can get their targets out safely— they don’t have functional immortality after all.

“See you at the main building,” Andy mutters, near silently as Booker cuts a hole in the fence. “Don’t be late, or I won’t leave you any guards.”

Nicky rolls his eyes and jerks his head. Joe nods, following him behind the building while Booker and Andy go in the other direction.

Both doors on the building are locked— he doesn’t know why he expected anything else, this is a prison camp after all— so they hurry on, watching for guards. Nicky shoots one that comes around the corner unexpectedly, Joe stabs his partner with a swift thrust of a Bowie knife.

Crouching, Joe empties the guards’ pockets of weaponry, passing a pistol and ammo to Nicky with a grunt. He keeps the ID badges and pass cards, stuffing them in a pocket just in case they need them later. If they do, they’re probably fucked, but better to have them just in case.

There… don’t appear to be enough guards for a compound this size, even given that it’s closer to dawn than nightfall. Four guards in the jeep, two that they’ve just killed. Probably a handful of others wandering around… where are the guard towers?

Tapping Nicky’s arm, Joe gestures to the lack of poles, no telltale glint of light on camera lenses… either this place is fake or something else is going on. Joe almost hopes that the place is fake. That would be a lot more reassuring than this unnatural emptiness.

Nicky frowns, nodding faintly before taking a deep breath and leading the way to the next building and the next patch of hazy darkness.

They clear another two pairs of guards, dragging their bodies into the darkest corners before stealing the weapons and keycards— the dead have no need of them after all— and moving steadily towards the last outbuilding.

Booker and Andy are already there, Booker dropping off the roof and landing with a grimace as they approach. “Six guards neutralized,” Nicky reports, watching the darkness. This has to be the guards’ building: smaller than the others, and only a single story.

Andy nods. “We had eight. And no alarm raised.” Her frown is barely visible in the dim light, but Joe knows her voice after all these years, knows what she’s thinking. Something about this is off. _Really_ off.

“Is this a trap?” Nicky murmurs? “They cleared out everyone to avoid losing more than they have to?”

“The job was legit.” Booker shakes his head. “It can’t be a trap.”

Because no one has ever managed to trap them before, has never managed to capture and torture them. Joe sneaks a glance at Andy, but her face is motionless, focused on the job at hand rather than the past.

Joe breathes out intentionally and shrugs. “Sun up in about ninety minutes. Let’s move.”

The keycards grant them access to the guard station behind them and it’s quick work to kill the guards inside, four of them napping in some sort of ready room and five more in a break room. By Joe’s count, that means they’re missing at least one, but he’s not going to worry about it.

Joe grunts, wipes the blood off his face as Nicky slices the throat of the last guard in the break room. Head wounds. Even when it’s barely more than a graze, they always bleed.

“Let me see,” Nicky demands in Italian, dropping to his knees at Joe’s side.

Huh. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen. “It’s fine, I’m fine,” Joe snaps, fending off prodding fingers. “I want this over with.”

Nicky ignores him, because of course he does, tilting Joe’s head to the side. Apparently satisfied with how he’s healing, Nicky takes a deep breath and presses a quick kiss to Joe’s cheek before pushing himself to his feet.

By this point, all of them are splattered with blood, although Joe thinks he’s the only one who’s died. Lucky shots or maybe these guards really are the very worst he’s seen outside of those Hollywood films Booker likes to watch.

“Factory is last up,” Booker points out, checking his ammo and glancing at the door. “Then we can figure out how to get the dorms open and the prisoners free.”

Everything about this job has been weird since it started. Which is probably why none of them realize when it goes from bad to catastrophic.

Booker spots the cameras first, every couple of meters, leaving no area unwatched. Looking at the placement of them, Joe doesn’t think there’s a single blind spot in the entire factory— which makes sense, prison labor and all, but something about it feels… off. The level of surveillance here compared to the rest of the camp…

There are children sleeping, rolled up in thin blankets, against the walls of some of the corridors. They don’t spot them at first, silently making their way through the hallways, trying to figure out the place to start with taking the entire place apart but then a hand slips from a bundle and Joe looks at the rest of them and…

Shit.

He meets the others’ eyes and grimaces. They hadn’t really been planning on just blowing the entire place up, but it will be a lot harder to organize getting everyone out if they have dozens of kids to worry about herding separate from the adults.

“Nicky. Booker. Go. Get them moving,” Andy orders. “ _All of them_. If you miss a single one--” she leaves the implicit threat hanging, but none of them have any problems interpreting it. Andy has always taken jobs that involve kids personally. (They all do, although Booker tends to drink heavily and fall even deeper into depression after them. Whatever keeps bringing them back did Booker no favors by waiting so long.)

Booker and Nicky peel off at the next intersection, heading somewhere. The main office, if they can find it probably. To trigger the fire alarms. That’s their preferred method of making it work at any rate.

Joe and Andy keep heading up, slowly. There aren’t any elevators, it’s all stairs and covered by cameras and he has no idea how they’re going to deal with the sheer number of times their faces are showing up, but that’s a problem for after this. For after they’ve gotten the kids reunited with their parents and _out of here_.

Somehow, the flurry of gunshots when they round the corner into what Joe suspects is the security office is a surprise. He doesn’t know how, it’s not like he’s forgotten what they’re doing, but everywhere else is so lightly defended.

Andy goes down in front of him before he even has a chance to pull his pistol— not enough, it’s not going to be enough. His first shot goes wild, stepping over Andy like it’s nothing. She’ll be fine. He nails one of the guards, a bullet drilling into the small gap between the top of his body armor and where his helmet protects. The guard drops, his rifle spilling to the side. Joe can’t reach it yet, but if he can force them to back up a little further.

Another guard slides into place, this one holding a riot shield. It won’t necessarily stop a bullet, but between it and the body armor, any hit Joe makes is unlikely to be fatal. He can work around that.

Andy stirs on the stairs behind him— good— and Joe thinks fuck it. There’s no room in this staircase for both of them to be shooting. Stepping forward, he draws his sword and stabs over the riot shield. He can’t tell if he hit flesh or not, but this close, he has enough leverage to rip the shield away, tossing it over his shoulder. It clatters somewhere far below them and that’s all he needs.

Jumping forward, he immediately ducks to the side of the doorway, clearing the way for Andy. And then he dies, five bullets hitting him center mass before he has a chance to do anything else.

Andy is halfway down the hallway when he pushes himself back up, fingers tightening around his sword hilt in one hand and his pistol in the other. Guards litter the corridor, slumped against walls or doorways. He grimaces as another bullet pushes itself out of his temple— must have been a ricochet— itching and burning as it goes.

A single deep breath to get himself pulled back together and then he’s on his feet, chasing after Andy and watching her back. They fight their way across the floor— all offices up here— pursuing the guards and trying to keep them from burning any important records.

He doesn’t know if the paper trail will fix anything, technically, prison labor isn’t illegal. Political prisoners are, Joe is pretty sure, but who’s going to have time to sue for their rights when they live _here_.

Assuming they have rights, or that they know about them.

They die another time apiece, and both of them are sporting gunshot wounds that are just taking too long to heal— everything takes too long to heal in this situation— when they finally clear the last knot of guards from one of the corner offices. It doesn’t seem like an important office, just one of the shift manager’s, so Joe doesn’t know why they’re fighting so hard to protect it. They finally get through though and limp over to the desk to take a breather.

“You still with me?” Andy croaks.

“Always, boss.” Twisting his neck, Joe waits for it to crack before coming alert. “Someone on the floor.”

Andy nods, grabbing one of the rifles she’s picked up and moving to the door. They’re lucky— the sun is coming up, but it’s still pre-dawn with not enough light for them to be backlit. Taking up position across from her, Joe cautiously peers around the doorway, trying to spot who he heard moving around.

“Joe, Andy?” Booker hisses from a few doors over. “Where are you?”

“Here,” Andy announces. “Where’s Nicky?”

“Two floors down, uncuffing kids. Sent me to find you— we could really use another pair of hands.”

This floor is clear. Joe jerks his head into a nod. “Let’s go. I have no idea how we’re going to get all these folks out of here, but that’s a solution to be found later.” He really wishes he knew why the kids were sleeping in here while the parents were in the barracks across the compound— something about it just isn’t sitting right— but they can figure it out later. “Did you say _uncuffing_?”

Booker grimaces, looking from Joe to Andy. “They’re chained into groups of five or so. They can lie down and everything, but some of these kids— I don’t think they’ve been further than six foot away from their pod since they got here.”

“Keep the kids separate and chained together,” Andy murmurs. “Any parent who tries to escape, they’d have five kids in tow to slow them down. Too many to carry, too many to try to separate.”

“And that’s assuming they don’t keep the parents in a similar constellation. Although some of the fine machine work…”

Joe shudders and leads the way to the nearest staircase. Later. Once they’ve ensured they’re the only ones in charge here. After that, they’ll work out how everyone was kept from escaping in this terribly undersecured facility.

He doesn’t think it’s just that their families and children are being kept separate, there’s something else, but he doesn’t know what, not yet.

They’re most of the way through unlocking the kids when the alarms start flashing. “Fuck,” Joe snaps, cursing the shitty paperclip that he’s using to pick the locks on the handcuffs. “Andy—“

“Yeah, I know,” she grits out around a mouthful of paperclips, or safety pins, he doesn’t even know anymore. “Hurry up.”

Joe jerks his head at Booker. “Go check it out, but don’t go far.”

He huffs but pockets whatever he’s using, snatching up his stolen gun and pushing through the crush of small bodies. The door at the end of their little hallway has an actual door, but it’s solid steel, no way to see through it. Booker pushes it open slightly and shakes his head, looking up and down the cross-corridor.

Joe only half-watches, paying more attention to the task at hand and the comforting steadiness of Nicky behind him.

“Nothing,” Booker reports, crouching across from Andy. “Didn’t see a damn thing.”

The door he just looked through explodes in a blue-white glut of flame arching towards them.

Joe grabs the nearest kid, rolls to put himself between the flames and them. They’re fifteen meters away from the door and he can still feel his jacket— what there is left of it anyway— burst into flames. He might scream, he’s not sure, burning has always been a terrible way to die, but even if he does, the fire steals all the air in the room.

He loses time, trying to protect the child and feeling his skin burn and char and, yeah, he’s definitely screaming now.

Something falls on him and he doesn’t remember anything else.

* * *

Something slaps him across the face, snapping his head to the side. “Damnit, Joe. Don’t do this.” Andy.

He grunts, forcing his eyes open. His eyelids feel like sandpaper, but he’ll take it. He’s alive at least.

“Fuck,” Andy sits back with a jolt. “Took your damn time.”

He’s not sure how to respond to that— some things take longer to heal than others— so he ignores it. “Nicky, Book?”

“Still healing,” Andy rasps out, and now he can hear how rough her voice is, like she’s not completely healed either. Fuck. “As soon as you can walk, we need to move.”

“Cops?”

“I don’t know. But we need to get out of here to regroup.”

Joe nods, closing his eyes briefly to take stock. He can feel everything, so he should be good to move in just a second. “The kids?”

Andy goes coldly silent, the way she does when a job goes catastrophically wrong.

Like she did after Quynh.

A raging temper tantrum won’t fix a goddamn thing, but it sure is tempting. Matching her calm, he pushes it all aside and gets to his feet. Later. He can deal with the rage and the hurt and the anger later, when he has someplace to put it. Right now? They need to get the fuck out of here.

Leaning over, he checks Booker where he’s slumped at the bottom of… some piece of machinery. There’s no telling what it did anymore. Skin crawls across Booker’s nose, the cartilage reforming underneath it until his nose just pops into place. It’s disgusting, but it’s a good sign.

Joe staggers when he reaches to drag Booker over his shoulders, off balance. Taking a deep breath, he forces himself upright, listens to the rough gasp of Booker’s lungs before following Andy— carrying Nicky— as she threads har way through the wreckage. They must have gotten thrown clear of the building, because he doesn’t think they were on the ground floor when everything went wrong.

Maybe they were.

All that’s left of any of the buildings— the factory, the dormitories, even the guard’s barracks— is torn and twisted metal, burnt and shattered concrete. No one survived this.

He’s not sure they’ve survived it, yet.

The first of the emergency vehicles is within earshot when they carefully deposit Nicky and Booker into the back of the jeep. Joe pulls concrete pieces off the hood, throwing them into the building remains as Andy tests the engine, and checks the tires. It doesn’t need to get them very far, just _out of here_.

The jeep starts up with a dull rumble, rattling but not dead.

Andy floors it as soon as Joe’s swung into the passenger seat.

**Author's Note:**

> Now go read Nicky and Joe healing: [From Here, I Can Pretend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161585).


End file.
